Archive for the ‘ex situ’ Category
August 25, 2008
Found by snooping around Cartoon Brew recently, Adrien Noterdaem’s Interactive Map of Springfield doesn’t require much in the way of introduction. It doesn’t even require a The Simpsons reference, like “Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!” or possibly “Trab pu kcip.” What it does require is an appreciation for a lot of effort. Here’s a section to give you the flavor of the thing:
The above is just an inanimate simulacrum. The actual one is indeed interactive, as promised.
The Interactive Map of Springfield >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:abandoned store, Professor P. J. Cornucopia’s Fantastic Foodmagorium a
Posted in The Simpsons, ex situ | No Comments »
August 10, 2008
Over at CHUD.com, lovable grouch Devin Faraci has written another editorial about WALL•E. The premise of this editorial is that WALL•E’s less-than-really-expected box office is partly due to “The central love story doesn’t really work.” He then proceeds to make an extended analysis of WALL•E and EVE’s relationship:
But of course this is a story told from the point of view of the social retard, so this creepy behavior is rewarded. This is the wish fulfillment aspect, and it’s here that the relationship story goes off the rails for me. In the movie EVE wakes up essentially in love with Wall*E; having him need to win her at this point would have been more interesting and realistic. Wall*E as a character undergoes almost no change in the movie, which again is that social misfit POV - it’s everybody else who needs to change, not the guy who can’t make eye contact with the check out girl at the supermarket.
I don’t buy the hypothesis of this being the reason for WALL•E’s relatively lackluster B.O. (Like Ratatouille, it’s a hard movie to sell properly.) Nor do I completely buy his analysis of the romance, but I have to admit that Mr. Faraci makes several excellent, thought-provoking, and essentially accurate points. It’s a valid critique, just one I don’t agree with. I think that the movie works best as a sort of nonliteral robot fairy tale (c.f. A.I.), though that probably is a critical cop-out.
NOTE FOR SENSITIVE READERS: Mr. Faraci refers to Doing It, using the euphemism “Doing It.”
The Devin’s Advocate: WALL•E’s Unlikely Love Story
>Catena Ex Situ
Tags:A.I.
Posted in Ratatouille, WALL-E, ex situ | 2 Comments »
August 5, 2008
This Ex Situ refers to one of the most heated controversies surrounding Disney’s The Lion King. No, not that SEX/SFX dust cloud thing. No, not the “Original Theatrical Cut” DVD’s fraudulent advertising. Nor the fact that the filthy, treacherous, often mentally handicapped hyenas are all voiced by minority actors. Nor that troubling Riefenstahlesque imagery. Nor the confusion over whether Timon is Rosencrantz and Pumbaa is Guildenstern or vice versa.
This Ex Situ’s particular controversy is: that much of The Lion King seems to have been wholeheartedly ripped off from the influential 1960’s Japanese anime Kimba the White Lion. Perhaps not the overall plot, but several scenes and characters in The Lion King bear a suspiciously uncanny resemblance to scenes and characters in Kimba.
Over at Kimba W. Lion’s Corner of the Web, there’s a ranting, unwieldy, and unfortunately cyan page discussing the whole issue:
It is my opinion that the creative people at Disney most definitely knew of Kimba as they were making The Lion King– but somehow, before the movie could be released, it was decided that the tie must be denied. Even if that means a slap in the face for Osamu Tezuka, the “Walt Disney of Japan”.
It’s pretty damning evidence.
Remake of Tezuka’s Popular Story Turns Into Denial? >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Guildenstern, Riefenstahlesque, Rosencrantz
Posted in Kimba the White Lion, The Lion King, ex situ, knock-offery | 2 Comments »
July 30, 2008
Excellent illustrator Jake Parker alerted us to this article from his blog, Agent 44. The meat of the thing really is fairly autoexplanatory, so I’ll preface it with his own quote:
Where does the machine end and the flesh begin? So, to make everything piece together a little better in my head I drew up what I think the internal structures of Lightning McQueen might look like:
Delightfully creepy! I’m sure the question of how the characters actually procreate will be answered in Cars 2. Be sure to click below to head over to the original article, wherein Mr. Parker gives some thoughts on Cars and his amazing vivisection.
Inside Lightning McQueen >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Lightning McQueen, vivisection
Posted in Cars, ex situ | 2 Comments »
July 23, 2008
Unfortunately, the staff’s busy schedule has prevented them from ever seeing a single episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Alas, as we hear little but good things about it. One of the editors over at Toon Zone, Ed Liu, obviously has more free time than we do, for last year he wrote a truly epic analysis of the color palettes of seemingly everybody. How epic? It had to be split into two parts. Here’s one snippet:
Interestingly, darker hues of green can be associated with decay and putrefaction because the mental association shifts from vegetation to mold. The Dai Li agents of Ba Sing Se are colored in a much darker green than the rest of the citizens of the Earth Kingdom. The on-screen reason for this hue is just a uniform color, versus the lighter greens of regular soldiers. However, the fact that they are also the instruments of the inner decay affecting the city is an interesting coincidence.
And for good measure, here’s another:
In contrast, Zuko takes much longer to adopt Earth Kingdom greens and yellows. Fire Nation brown and red continue to dominate his clothing for the remainder of the season, even when he’s on his date with Jin in “Tales of Ba Sing Se.” The only time he ever puts on full Earth Kingdom green and yellow clothing is at the very end of the season in “The Guru”, when his extremely un-Zuko-like behavior even raises the suspicions of Uncle Iroh. It’s extremely short-lived, though — by “The Crossroads of Destiny,” Zuko is wearing Fire Nation colors again when he and Uncle Iroh visit to the Earth King’s palace. It’s the first hint we get how he will ultimately turn on the Avatar by the end of the episode.
If this floats your boat, and if you’re still reading this then it really should, then head on over and read the full article.
Color Coding: How “Avatar the Last Airbender” Uses Color (Part 1) >Catena Ex Situ
Color Coding: How “Avatar the Last Airbender” Uses Color (Part 2) >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Airbended, Airbender, Airbending, blue, green, red, to Airbend, white, yellow
Posted in Avatar, ex situ | No Comments »
July 16, 2008
Kevin Koch, whose SynchroLux blog we will be citing again, worked as an animator on the DreamWorks film Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas. Oh, he liked the work just fine. However, he doesn’t feel that enthusiastic about the final film product. Specifically, he has issues with a subpar MacGuffin:
I never really bought into the premise of the film, and ultimately neither did the audience. I could go on at length about some of the story and character failings, but I’ll lay out my thoughts on one major problem. It had the biggest MacGuffin in the history of film. Not just a big MacGuffin, but a MacGuffin that needed to be really important to the story.
Don’t know what a MacGuffin is? Well, you should. And Mr. Koch will tell you all about it. So click below for a fine discussion of Robert Ludlum’s The Sinbad MacGuffin.
Sinbad and the Big MacGuffin >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:DreamWorks, MacGuffin
Posted in Sinbad, ex situ | No Comments »
July 10, 2008
Well, here we were, all planning to write up an article tonight linking to and discussing the assorted controversies surrounding the release of Pixar’s newest precious stone, WALL•E, only to find out that The Onion’s excellent The A.V. Club has beaten us to the proverbial punch. Such is the cutthroat cosm of over-analyzationing. The A.V. Club categorizes the controversies into four groups:
- It promotes liberal fascism!
- It’s prejudiced against fat people!
- It’s hypocritical!
- It’s too popular!
The staff here was quite fond of WALL•E, and did not find it to be too preachy or damning about anything. We thought it was a charming satirical fantasy encouraging responsible awareness and making connections with others, wrapped around a chewy nougat of sweet romance and amazing character animation. Also, we are so not tired of posting articles about it.
Your Guide to the WALL•E Controversy >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:fascism, liberal, onion
Posted in WALL-E, ex situ, politics, stereotypes | 1 Comment »
July 6, 2008
Nota bene: We wish to apologize for the lack of updates in the last few days. Our red-headed Editor has been busy with a curious new part-time job on Fleet Street which keeps him occupied from ten to two each day.
One thing Pixar films are not is shallow. Their enduring appeal partly rests on the myriad themes and intelligent designs which wimple softly in the flow like brook trout in the streams in the mountains. This is also quite true of their latest delightfully delightful film, WALL•E. For those of you who have not seen this amazing film as of yet, please do so immediately, and we shall wait for your return to continue our article.
The percolatory Cartoon Brew has brought to our attention an interview in Christianity Today with WALL•E director Andrew Stanton. In this interview, Mr. Stanton explicitly discusses some of the biblical themes and influences in the film. What follows is a sample:
I wasn’t using the Noah’s Ark story as a guide, but through circumstances, I loved the parallels of EVE almost being like this dove, of going down for proof that it’s time to come back. It just worked in that allegory, so I ran with it.
A lot of the discussion is the same stories about WALL•E and Pixar that have been reiterated in every recent interview, but what’s left makes for an interesting read.
The Little Robot That Could >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Bible, Eve, Noah's Ark
Posted in WALL-E, ex situ | 1 Comment »
June 29, 2008
Nowadays, it is certain that the Super Friends would be labeled as an educational/informative show. It’s full of over half the knowing as a typical episode of G.I. Joe: Gravity works like a magnet? Check. Things are made of atoms called “electrons?” Got it. A Native American man pushes the Earth out of orbit in order to fight a giant Viking? I think NOVA had a whole episode devoted to that.
On the other hand, sometimes it’s really hard to write a graceful segue.
In this classic Penny Arcade comic, webcomic auteurs par excellences Gabe and Tycho have written a surprisingly nuanced deconstruction of the entire Wonder Twins canon. I think it might even explain why Bizarro had better grammar than Wonderdog.
Penny Arcade! - Activate >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:Zan, Jayna, Gleek, ice trapeze, Penny Arcade
Posted in G.I. Joe, Super Friends, ex situ | No Comments »
June 23, 2008
Devin Faraci from CHUD.COM, who despite being a bit of a grumpster really is one of the best movie journalist/reviewers on the internet, has seen WALL•E before you and me. Lucky guy. However, he took issue with the movie’s strong pro-environmental themes apparently contradicting the fleet of merchandising tie-ins surrounding the movie.
Here’s a piece of the piece to whet your controversial whistle:
When I got to the Four Seasons hotel the next day, the site of the junket for the film, and saw an entire room dedicated to showing off the marketing tie-ins, I lost the sense of irony and began to think what I was seeing was flat out hypocrisy. I wondered if maybe Stanton’s denials about the messages weren’t coming from a marketing point of view but from simple shame.
A minor warning that if you’re trying to stay completely data-free before you see the movie, you might want to wait until after. If you’ve been reading anything else about the movie, there’s probably nothing in there that you don’t already know.
Is WALL•E Environmental or Hypocritical? >Catena Ex Situ
Tags:CHUD, junket
Posted in WALL-E, ex situ | 3 Comments »
